After Sunday’s 26-19 overtime victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers called the win “trajectory-altering.”
“These are the most important moments for us as a team to grow because this is a trajectory-altering win,” Rodgers said Sunday at Raymond James Stadium. “We could go 3-3. (Then) we have the Paris trip – that’s just not what you want to do.”
The veteran QB also said that his team couldn’t have afforded an upset to the 1-5 Bucs.
“To beat a team we should have beaten — there’s no two ways around it. You’ve got to beat teams like that if you want to get to where we want to get,” Rodgers said after the win. “It didn’t look like a win for a long time. So I’m proud of our guys. The defense kept us in it, and the offense finally made a couple of plays.”
First dahn ???? @dkm14 https://t.co/9OLUk5dv6M
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) October 18, 2026
Not to mince words, but I’m not sure how both things can be true.
How can a win be “trajectory-altering” when you won a game that — by your own admission — you should’ve won? Doesn’t that keep you on the same course you should’ve been on all along?
But I do know this: Had the Steelers lost, it would have definitely been a trajectory-altering defeat.
That’s for certain.
The outcome in Tampa was a win for the Steelers (4-2) that kept them on the exact trajectory they need to maintain. It’s one that would get them to a 6-2 record at the bye — after a victory Sunday in Paris against the 2-4 New Orleans Saints and another Nov. 1 against the Cleveland Browns at Acrisure Stadium.
That’s a building where the Browns have enjoyed victory just twice since it opened in the 2001 season.
After their defeat in Cleveland on Oct. 1, the Steelers didn’t appear capable of winning four games in a row at any point this season. Now they really should do exactly that before their Week 9 break. That’s if — to quote Rodgers — they “want to get to where” they “want to get.”
Presumably, that plateau is at least beyond the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
Rodgers said the quiet part out loud. For all the politically correct attempts to avoid bulletin board material, NFL players know the teams they are supposed to beat. They see the standings. They see the stats and the rosters and the depth charts.
Rodgers and company should be thinking the same thing about New Orleans and about the return game versus the Browns.
And they should produce the same result as they did in Tampa. Only this time in less emotionally agonizing fashion.